[somenameforme]

I see no reason to think this is the case. Time had a reasonable article with some relevant back history here. [1] But beyond this I'd also add that I think colonialism has been an abject failure. It's been a story of small-short term gains for massive long-term losses, the MBA mindset of geopolitics. As soon as colonies start to become successful, they seek their independence. So you just end up with expensive adversarial relationships with anything resembling successful colonies, while getting bankrupted by your unsuccessful colonies. Basically - the story of the rise and fall of the British Empire. It's not something anybody is looking to recreate.

[1] - https://time.com/6301177/niger-african-support-russia/

[int_19h]

It's very simplified back history, though. Lest we forget, those "socialist governments" that Soviets provided support to were themselves very oppressive in many cases, and not particularly socialist in most. And while Russian presence there today does enjoy popular support overall, the families of people who get summarily executed by Wagner might not be so enthusiastic.

As far as gains and losses, you're correct when looking purely at the economic aspect of it, but that's not all there is to it. Indeed, my fear is that the West is finding it very hard to understand (and believe in) what Russia is doing precisely because it is so focused on economic cost-benefit analysis, and ignores the ideological aspects, which dominate the Russian political elites today.

[somenameforme]

The point I'm making is that there's simply no evidence to suggest that Russia is interested in colonialism. It's neither in their ideological nor economic best interest - by contrast a strong and independent Africa that has good relations with them, absolutely is! Also, the US has not been in the least bit caught off guard by anything Russia has done. Here [1] is a fun cable dating back to 2008, describing in detail how NATO looking to take in Ukraine would likely lead to war.

---

"NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains "an emotional and neuralgic" issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene."

---

That's just one paragraph. The whole cable is an easy read, interesting, and full of evidence. But what makes that cable fun is not only how clearly it emphasizes we knew exactly what would happen, but also who wrote it. It was written by William J Burns - the current head of the CIA.

[1] - https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html

[wumeow]

Ukraine has flirted with NATO since it split from the Soviet Union, but it wasn’t until the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas war that it began seriously pursuing membership. Now Finland and Sweden have joined, and whatever’s left of Ukraine after the war will probably join too. If Russia doesn’t want countries to join NATO, it should stop giving them reasons to.

> It was written by William J Burns - the current head of the CIA

When Burns joined the CIA in March 2021, Russia was already building up troops for the invasion. I’m not sure what, if anything, you’re insinuating here.

[somenameforme]

The annexation of Crimea didn't happen until the situation predicted by Burns played out exactly as expected. And the catalyst there was us backing a coup that overthrew a [democratically elected] Russian leaning President, sending the largely ethnic Russian regions (including Crimea and Donbas) into outright rebellion, starting the exact civil war Burns had predicted. Conveniently for furthering US interests in Ukraine, this predictable consequence also resulted in the disenfranchisement of a very large chunk of the entire Russian leaning voterbase in Ukraine, the normalization of groups like Azov, and so on. It's easy to see how such things could be alluring with a myopic analysis of the situation.

The importance of it being written by Burns is that there are a lot of cables written, often shooting in many different directions. But in this case, the intelligence on what would happen with Ukraine not only remained consistent, but the individuals writing it were and remained extremely high level players within the government. So the idea the US was, in any way, surprised by what happened can be quite safely discarded as false.

[wumeow]

> The annexation of Crimea didn't happen until the situation predicted by Burns played out exactly as expected.

Except Ukraine wasn't seeking NATO membership, they were going to sign the EU cooperation agreement until Russia bullied and threatened them into backing out. Again, Russia is ultimately the one encouraging NATO expansion.

> And the catalyst there was us backing a coup that overthrew a [democratically elected] Russian leaning President, sending the largely ethnic Russian regions (including Crimea and Donbas) into outright rebellion, starting the exact civil war Burns had predicted.

The US didn't want Yanukovych ousted. The Nuland tape shows that the US was trying to set up meetings between him and oppo leaders after he opened up spots in his interim government (because both sides wanted a neutral mediator and the EU was dragging it's feet, hence the famous comment). He chose to flee, though, and was voted out by parliament.

[somenameforme]

Reuters had an uncharacteristically informative article [1] on why Ukraine backed away from the EU. Joining the European Union, and joining the Eurasian Customs Union [2] are mutually exclusive. Essentially Yanukovych wanted to join the EU, but wasn't getting what he was after. He was looking for $160 billion to make up for what he argued Ukraine would have gained from joining the Eurasian Customs Union - the EU offered him $0.8 billion. Like always it most likely just comes down to corruption - seeing where he could butter his belly the most.

It wasn't the EU that was desperate for Ukraine to join, it was the US. We wanted to use them as a strategic tool against Russia, whereas them actually joining the EU would cause nothing but problems for the EU because it'd result in a mass flooding of labor, cheap grain, and so on. Flooding the EU with cheap grain sounds awesome, but it would imperil farmers and agriculture, in general, in other countries. It's an issue that persists to this day with numerous countries banning the import of Ukrainian grain - something that could not be done if Ukraine was in the EU. The only relevant reference from Nuland regarding Yanukovych was a desire to "see if he wants to talk before or after." [3]

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-russia-deal-speci...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customs_Union_of_the_Eurasian_...

[3] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

[mopsi]

> And the catalyst there was us backing a coup that overthrew a [democratically elected] Russian leaning President, sending the largely ethnic Russian regions (including Crimea and Donbas) into outright rebellion, starting the exact civil war Burns had predicted.

The catalyst was shooting of peaceful protesters that killed over 100 people, and the president fleeing as soon as he realized that he had lost the support even among his own party and would be facing criminal charges. You mention that Yanukovych was a democratically elected president, but you conventiently fail to mention that he was removed from office by the parliament with unanimous 328-vs-0 votes.

And there was no civil war. It was entirely manufactured by Russian military and special services from the start. From a judgement by the European Court of Human rights:

  The Court held, on the basis of the vast body of evidence before it, that Russia had effective control over all areas in the hands of separatists from 11 May 2014 on account of its military presence in eastern Ukraine and the decisive degree of influence it enjoyed over these areas as a result of its military, political and economic support to the “DPR” and the “LPR”. In particular, the Court found it established beyond any reasonable doubt that there had been Russian military personnel present in an active capacity in Donbass from April 2014 and that there had been a large-scale deployment of Russian troops from, at the very latest, August 2014. It further found that the respondent State had a significant influence on the separatists’ military strategy. Several prominent separatists in command positions were senior members of the Russian military acting under Russian instructions, including the person who had had formal overall command of the armed forces of the “DPR” and the “LPR”. Further, Russia had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale (including the Buk-missile used to shoot down flight MH17). Russia had carried out artillery attacks upon requests from the separatists and provided other military support. There was also clear evidence of political support, including at international level, being provided to the “DPR” and the “LPR” and the Russian Federation had played a significant role in their financing enabling their economic survival.

  By the time of the 11 May 2014 “referendums”, the separatist operation as a whole had been managed and coordinated by the Russian Federation. The threshold for establishing Russian jurisdiction in respect of allegations concerning events which took place within these areas after 11 May 2014 had therefore been passed. That finding meant that the acts and omissions of the separatists were automatically attributable to the Russian Federation. /---/ In the absence of any evidence demonstrating that the dependence of the entities on Russia had decreased since 2014, the jurisdiction of the respondent State continued as at the date of the hearing on 26 January 2022.

The Russian commander mentioned here, Igor Girkin, an operative of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and hero of radical Russian nationalists, has boasted in public how without his actions in Sloviansk[1], the protests in Eastern Ukraine would've fizzled out after a few arrests or fines to troublemakers - instead of exploding into a large war.

If you get your facts straight, the story changes completely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sloviansk

[somenameforme]

I actually agree with most of that. But you're missing some important timelines. The breakaway regions did not breakaway in May, they broke away immediately after the coup in March. And yes at that point Russia began plying them with support. The only thing that happened in May was the Donbas referendum. And that referendum was indeed most almost certainly illegitimate. Consequently, it was officially recognized by nobody - including Russia, who instead simply opined, somewhat tongue in cheek, that they "respect the will of the population of the regions." [1] Russia even tried to encourage the leaders of the breakaway regions to hold the referendum later (probably knowing they could not legitimately obtain the support required for action), but they chose to move ahead with a sham referendum anyhow.

But the point here is that the civil war began in March. Could Ukraine have snuffed out the rebellious regions without Russian interference? Most likely, but countries feeding arms and support to rebellions that they support is pretty run of the mill geopolitics stuff (and was also 100% expected by the US per the diplomatic cables). Similarly, it's highly unlikely that the Ukrainian coup would have succeeded without US backing and direct involvement. In the 8 years that followed (until the invasion) Russia repeatedly tried to organize some sort of a cease fire and mutually agreeable solution for the breakaway regions - basically letting them have some sort of special administrative status while remaining part of Ukraine. This resulted in the Minsk accords. Those accords were then repeatedly violated, with both sides blaming the other, until the situation reached a climax in 2022.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/13/world/europe/ukraine.html

[racional]

The point I'm making is that there's simply no evidence to suggest that Russia is interested in colonialism.

A very strange thing to say, given that war against Ukraine is an extremely blatant attempt at re-colonization (with a heaping dose of full-tilt racist ethnic cleansing to boot).

Putin's designs in Africa are clearly different, and "colonialism" probably isn't the right conceptual model to apply there. But this insinuation you're making that he's on some kind of "anti-colonial" mission there (or that that he's lending the people in those countries a helping hand in any other way) is equally bizarre, an fundamentally quite naive.

[somenameforme]

Russia's motivations were spelled out plainly in the diplomatic cables, both in their own words and then in our analysis of them. Obviously it has nothing to do with colonialism. Similar for this nonsense about the Ukraine war being an ethic cleansing. The UN has put the total civilian death toll in Ukraine at 10,675 [1] in the more than 2 years of fighting. That number is a minimum, but it's not going to be orders of magnitude higher. The Ukraine War has had one of the lowest civilian casualty ratios of any significant scale war.

Russia's motivations in Africa obviously aren't anti-colonial or whatever. It's the same stuff that's going on with South Africa, Brazil, China, and so on. They're simply pivoting towards the 85% of the world, the 'global south' - a pivot that began many years ago, but which the conflict has accelerated due to strained relations with the 15%. The stronger and more independent the global south, the more beneficial and productive the pivot.

[1] - https://ukraine.un.org/en/264355-report-human-rights-situati... (page 10, note 38)

[racional]

Obviously it has nothing to do with colonialism.

You're way off base on that. Just look at any of Putin's numerous (and incredibly obnoxious) pronouncements on the topic of Russia-Ukraine relations.

I don't think further discussion will be productive here. I'll have to leave you to sort these issues out on your own.